richardp

Hi, We have had 66 RM Ones for just over 3 years and out of that we have had to call out RM (onsite agreement) for approx 15 faults. Most of the faults have been minor such as the vdu power button being pushed too hard, however a few have been motherboard or cpu failures. Having said that we have been very happy with them and are considering replacing them with more of the same this year. However we are looking at other options such as dual boot imacs and a new all in one pc from Ergo. The Ergo PC looks very similar to the imac but it has a maximum 19" screen but it can be a touch screen as an option. I will know more soon as we are getting a demo model to try out this week. Also have you considered the new HP Touchsmart PC ? It does seem to be aimed more at the home pc market but is an all in one with a 22" screen which is also a touch screen. Richard

For what you want anything with 2 outputs will work, on my very old work desktop I am using a Radeon 7500 with two TFTs at 1280x1024 each without any problems at all.

Hi, I am currently in a similar position to yourself. Last October we purchased 16 iMacs to be mainly used for animation work. However we are scheduled to replace our current windows desktops this summer and are considering replacing them with dual boot macs. At the moment I do not have a mac server of any description so I cannot comment on that side of the system. However I have to say that the imaging of the dual boot macs has been a pain as there currently seems no way to image both the mac and windows side in one simple step. Like you would with Ghost for example, so I end up having to image each side using netrestore and winclone then tweak them to join our windows domain for file sharing etc... I am sure that some of the process would be speeded up with an xserver and scripting. Plus without the server there is little else other than user authentication that standard Active Directory can do such as locking down the desktop etc... If you are just going to use OS X rather than dual boot then your life will be a lot easier. However if you are going to dual boot and may be in the situation where you want to image a few times a year then it can turn into a time consuming process, at least in my experience. Also as mentioned before make sure that the software you need for students and staff will work before you commit to anything. Also have you considered the cost of hardware support for the macs? Plus the turn around time for repairs ? ( i have heard that 3 weeks is common). Richard

Can't really recommend a display but have you tried installing the Omega version of your graphics card drivers?. They will allow you to choose a lot more options for resolution than the standard drivers, plus they are usually faster. OmegaDrivers.net - Home of the ATI & NVIDIA Omega Drivers. Home RichardP

We have a couple of vga cables that probably run approx 25m and even with an amplifier it still has an effect on the picture a bit. If I was doing it again I would definitely take a look at using CAT5e which can run upto approx 140m for video. Or spend a lot more on vga amplifiers to get the best possible picture quality etc... RichardP

Hello All, Just purchased a Macbook Air for one of our staff, the only problem I have at the moment is that I cannot get the external superdrive to work in windows XP. I have installed the latest version of the bootcamp drivers (V2.1) and it has made no difference. It can see the drive in device manager but has a warning against it "reinstall the drivers for this device (Code 18)". I have reinstalled the drivers but it just loops around all the time giving the same message to reinstall. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it with the same results. I have booted with it already directly connected to the usb port also. I know the drive has been tweaked so that it only works on a macbook air but from what I have read it should work when connected to a macbook air running XP. It works fine in OS X as you would expect. Any help will be greatly appreciated ! Richard

Hi, How about the Drobo with the new nas addon, not cheap but seems to fit your requirements Drobo storage box gets NAS add-on | Register Hardware Or what about FreeNAS, I know it is still in beta but it is free and will run off a usb key or compact flash card FreeNAS: The Free NAS Server - Home I have not used either of the above so I cannot comment on how good they really are. You could always get a copy of micro$oft windows home server 8-) Richard

Hi, I have 3 macbook pros running OS X and Windows XP and 16 imacs running OS X that are about to be imaged with XP as well. With OS X you can authenticate user accounts with a Windows Server and do some file sharing but thats about it. To do any Active Directory like policies etc... you need an apple server (which could be just a mac mini with the server software installed). If you are not using OS X then quite honestly I don't see the point of the purchase. What exactly do you mean by "the powers that be won't buy any more software to make the macs work on server 2003... " ? What isn't working ?. If they are just running XP only then they should just act as windows computers and work as normal with server 2003. Richard.

Hi, I have had this working for a while using Server 2003 and ISA 2004. The only way I could get it to work was to create a rule that used the "MMS Server" traffic protocol which allows inbound TCP port 1755 and outbound UDP port 1755 with the application filter "MMS Filter" active. Then just point it to your mms server ip address. To be honest we don't really use it any more as we are using flash and flash video objects as they work across most platforms not just Windows with less hassle. Richard

Hi, the only problem I can see with doing this is that a lot of programs create temporary files (such as ms word) while you edit a document. Once it is saved the program deletes the temporary file, it would be unable to do it without the delete priv so you would end up with a load of old temporary files in the users folder. Richard

Scripting is the way to go, I have done something similar that looks at the AD OU and maps a default printer depending on what room they are in. However don't you have any print management software running to stop users printing unless they have credit? We use Print Manager Plus from softwareshelf, it works well and stops anyone printing to any printer unless we grant them credit. It also gives you a way reporting how much is printed over time etc... Richard

I was in a similar position to you SSFC late last year. We purchased 16 iMacs to use mainly for animation (at least initially), but did not purchase a server. I had been using a macbook pro for approx a year that I had joined to the AD domain without any problems. However I had not really bothered to try and get the macbook to map drives etc... until we decided to purchase more macs. I soon discovered that without a mac server things are a lot more complicated. For example it appears to be impossible to map directly to a shared folder unless it is a top level share on the windows server. So for example if you share a folder called "home" then put more folders into "home" as user home folders such as "home\user01\" you cannot map to the "user01" only "home". It is possible to get around this for the user home folder by not using scripts and going back to the old "Home folder" option in the users AD account in the Profile tab. This puts a folder on the mac dock which points to the folder directly. The only other option would be to make all shared folders top level shares, not something I wanted to do. Also as mentioned before there is no ability to restrict the access that the user has other than by making sure any admin options that have a padlock on them have it locked or by removing options from the default user profile such as removing the "Network" option in the finder window so they cannot easily browse the network. Printing is also an issue, as I understand it a mac cannot print through a windows print server because it does not send any user info with the print job so the print server will not accept the job ( could be wrong on the detail but it will not work for me unless I setup the printer directly with the mac and not through the windows server). Basically you can connect macs to AD for user authentication and simple file sharing and internet access but if you want to do anything else you either need some third party software (like ADmitMac or MacAdministrator) or a mac server. Have a look at http://www.bombich.com/ it is a really useful site, especially if you want to start imaging to speed up setup etc... Hope some of this was useful. Richard

Have you tried the following : VirtualDub, DVD2AVI, or Mpeg2AVI Also assuming that the VOB files are not encrypted you can open them directly with premiere elements which should cost no more than £35 (available since version 2) or change the extension to .mpg and import them into premiere pro. Richard

Using Print Manager Plus 6 with 2003 R2 with no problems. I tried a few out over 18months ago and settled on PMP for ease of setup / operation and cost. Its nothing fancy but it does the job. Richard

Hi thanks for the replies, However I do not think I am describing what I want to achieve very well. When the user logs on with their AD user account that account is stored locally with all the "nasty folders" like a windows profile. They then work locally and if whatever they are doing (such as photoshop or final cut) produces some work they are then able to save just the work/project onto the server for safety. I realise that I can use the old NT user account home folder map option in their AD user account, I will if I have to, but I don't like using that and would much rather use a script which can be more flexible in the future. For example what would I do if I needed to add another mapped drive letter in the future for some other purpose, such as a resources folder etc... richard

not being a cat lover that really doesn't bother me, also I fail to see what dog has to do with macs, unless I need to join some sort of sect to get this to work? Do the Scientologists have a Thetan based mac helpdesk ? Thanks for that DMcCoy I will have a look over the script and see if it gives me any ideas.

Hello, I have what I thought would be an easy problem to solve but it has turned out to be a bit more complicated (unless I am missing something!). We have decided to buy 16 new iMacs, infact we have already ordered them. However the powers that be have not allocated any money for a OS X server. Assuming we continue to get a decent level of capital funding next year we will buy one then. However until then I need to get the iMacs to work with our 2003 server. I have had a macbook pro for a while now but I am still fairly new to macs. I have been able to join my macbook to the AD domain without too many problems at all (Tiger 10.4.10). What I am having a problem with is mapping a shared folder to the mac. I do not want to use the "proper" home folder setup using the old style AD user account home folder entry as I do not want all the extra files and folders to appear in the mapped folder plus these iMacs will be used for mostly animation / video editing (HD and SD content) and audio work etc... I want them to work locally, they will have 500gigs to work with after all, and then to save to the network share for security etc... I assumed I would be able to do this with a simple script that would mount the shared folder but I have been unable to get it to work. I can map it from within Finder using "Go" "Connect to Server" and entering smb:///machomeshare/mac01 However this only maps to the top level share (machomeshare) and not to (mac01). But at least it works and places an icon within Finder and on the desktop. I know I could drag that share into startup items but I don't like that as it is not very flexible. I have also been able to mount the share to a folder within the users folder using mount_smbfs but as soon as I click on the folder in Finder it vanishes. It is still mapped but to get to it I have to use the command line to navigate to it, which I can't let the users do obviously. Ideally what I want is a script that will run at logon (I already have LoginWindow Manager) and will mount a shared folder depending upon the username (so map /machomeshare/mac01 if the username is mac01 etc...) . This mounted share should then be visible either on the desktop or within Finder (ideally both). Any help will be greatly appreciated. Richard

Don't forget about Torpark, they don't even have to install it !!

Hello again, it sounds to me like you have not enabled the other relevant group policy options. As BKGarry said before you cannot completely block the explorer process as it is the shell for windows and is required. I have gone through our top level default group policy and picked out what I think are all the relevant options you need to look at : User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Windows Components \ Windows Explorer Removes the Folder Options menu item from the tools menu - ENABLED Remove File menu from windows explorer - ENABLED Remove "Map Network Drive" and "Disconnect Network Drive" - ENABLED Remove Search button from windows explorer - ENABLED Hides the manage item on the windows explorer context menu - ENABLED Hide these specified drives in My Computer - Restrict C drive only - ENABLED No "Computers Near Me" in My Network Places - ENABLED No "Entire Network" in My Network Places - ENABLED User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Start Menu and Taskbar Remove My Documents icon from the Start Menu - ENABLED Remove Documents menu from Start Menu - ENABLED Remove Network Connections from Start Menu - ENABLED Remove Search menu from Start Menu - ENABLED Remove Run menu from Start Menu - ENABLED Remove Drag and Drop context menus on the Start Menu - ENABLED Prevent changes to Taskbar and Start Menu settings - ENABLED Remove access to the context menus for the taskbar - ENABLED Do not use the search based method when resolving shell shortcuts - ENABLED Do not use the tracking based method when resolving shell shortcuts - ENABLED User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Desktop Remove My Documents icon on the desktop - ENABLED Remove properties from the My Computer context menu - ENABLED Hide My Network Places icon on desktop - ENABLED Prohibit user from changing my documents path - ENABLED Don't save settings at exit - ENABLED User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ Network \ Network Connections Prohibit access to the New Connection Wizard - ENABLED User Configuration \ Administrative Templates \ System Prevent access to the command prompt - ENABLED Prevent access to registry editing tools - ENABLED Don't run specified Windows applications - ENABLED - explorer.exe By enabling the above options my users are unable to access the network apart from through server shares mapped to drive letters in the main vb login script. Even if they do as you describe they can never get to a point where they can see the network or any icons for it. Even if they run my computer and type in a network path (such as \\servername\sharename) it returns an error message. Again you should also be looking at your share permissions at the same time so if they do somehow manage to get to the network they will be unable to access any shares that they should not have access to anyway. I hope some of this helps, I am no expert with AD but it seems to work for me! Richard

Hi, You need to go into group policy management and edit your top level policy. Go to User Configuration / Administrative Templates / System. In the top level of System there is an option called "Don't run specified Windows applications". You need to enable this and add "explorer.exe" to the list of disallowed applications (by clicking on properties on the above item). This stops a user from launching any program in that list but does not prevent the system process from doing so. Which obviously allows the shell to run correctly. This is not perfect but if you do this as well as prevent access as I mentioned earlier it should stop them from doing what you have described. Richard

Hi, You can do this through Active Directory Group Policy and making sure that your server shares are set with the correct permissons so even if they get to the network they can only access what they would access anyway. In group policy management you need to look at User Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Explorer. In there you can hide drive letters, computers near me, entire network etc... We also prevent them from running explorer.exe directly. You really should not have to play around with the registry or fiddle with netbios settings to achieve what you want to do. Richard

I like the look of the touch but I still would not buy an apple ipod and I have a macbook !!. I got a Cowon D2 a few months ago. This is also touch screen (before the ipod) which is a 2.5" QVGA 16million colours screen, it has 4Gb onboard with expansion through a standard SD card slot and approx 52hours of audio playback time!!. It also has an FM radio built in and hopefully someone will complete a port of rockbox for it soon. It cost me about £139 but should be a little cheaper by now.

Hi, I just recently replaced 5 3Com Superstacks and 2 Cisco Catalyst 2950 with 2 4100gl switches. Both of the 4100gls have 7x 20port Gigabit cards installed leaving one slot free in each chassis. This gives me 280 gigabit ports for an approx cost of £11,000. With a lifetime replacement warranty as standard on the chassis and the cards, flexible configurations and good performance and at a price you can afford I think you would be hard pressed to find a better solution. I also looked at the Cisco 4507R Switch, I had three problems with this option. Firstly the total number or ports would be approx 240, 40 less than the HP setup. Secondly the 4507R chassis would not fit into the available space in my network cabinet. Finally the cost was going to be approx £24,000. Again I also looked at the 3Com 7700 Switch. The total port capacity was better at 288 ports but this chassis would also not fit into my network cabinet. Again the cost was higher at approx £20,000. There is a smaller chassis version but that would have only given me 144 ports. The above may make me sound like a HP salesman (which I am not!) but this is the second time I have used HP ( I used the 4000 switch in my previous job in manufacturing) and I have yet to be disapointed. Hope this helps. Richard